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Class _r«3_2_ 

Rnnir /^ L 



C0EVRIGHT DEPOSm 



LOVE POEMS 



REGINALD c}''R0BBINS 




CAMBRIDGE 

l^rintro at ttie i&tiittsittt ^ttsg 

1912 



^^^ 



s 






COPYRIGHT, 1903, 1905 AND I912, BY REGINALD CHAUNCEY ROBBINS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



/^ 



t:CI.A320471 



)• 



CONTENTS 

Page 

AN ANNUAL CYCLE x 

I-LXIX 

POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 73 

I-XVIII 

AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 93 

I-XXVI 

PALESTINE UNVISITED 121 

I-XXIX 

A MOURNING FOR DEATH 153 

I-XI 

A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN . . . . . .167 

I-XXV 



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I 

Sweet, if these Songs of Sorrow in thy soul 
Mean a new music to a grief long dumb, 
Take them for utterance and speak them forth 
Transfigured by the passion of thy love ! 
Sweet, what re-birth ! if so this verse that halts 
Complaining from a tongue whose only strength 
Is that it echoeth some sense of thee — 
Such shadow flame forth in the substance of 
Thy spirit's very power of life and light ! 
Then were the service splendid ; then, the voice 
Full choir of glory ; and the song at last 
Heav'n-sent, heav'n-searching : thou, in truth, its 
God ! — . • 



LOVE POEMS 



II 

Love, if this verse fail of acceptance in 
Thy spirit's tragedy, yea, miss a life 
Loftily thus ennobled in thy speech, 
Dream it not dead, still-born out of a blank 
And barren volubility. But read 
An heart-real cry, a soul-necessity 
Of self-relief — it will not harm thee so 
And may save me from madness. 

There are hours, 
Beloved, when the agony finds act 
In sound which owes no tongue articulate : 
Groanings and spasms of the shrinking frame 
Unhuman, brute-like. Wilt thou blame a song ? 



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III 

Morn after morn unto these anxious eyes 
Brings expectation ; eve on eve descending 
Withdraweth opportunity : the day 
Done, and hope wasted : and the heart of hope 
Turn'd inward, wasting with the waste of days. 

When was the world worn vacant ? when, the 

worth. 
Wonder and beauty of all ways of work 
Made mockery : and daylight, a despair ? 
I have known strength and sunlight in myself 
Of the new day : no mockery. But now 
Even sorrow stales ; and only desolateness 
Remains : and emptiness of any aim. 



LOVE POEMS 



IV 

And yet, 't were blasphemy ! Lo, thou remainest ; 
Thou : and the thought of thee. And all my world 
Is wonderful, sacred because thy shrine. — 
There is a faith, a worship without end, 
A work and worth of work which meaneth thee! 

Such is my privilege, to love thee now 

In every effort : every hour of earth 

Directed toward and still attaining thee. 

Thou art not cryptic from this world of thee, 

Hid from my world which is so wholly thine ; 

Which bends all energies and every aim 

To one aim : as thou knowest ; and shalt know ! 



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I HAD not thought to have told thee. But some strength 

Impell'd me to the utterance, to bear 

The supreme splendor of the truth and thee. 

I had had vision of a vast, sweet peace 

In marvelous community with thee ; 

A life of strenuous labor wherein all 

Of heart and strength and soul were centred in 

Thy soul and strength and heart unioning all 

Earth and the things even beyond all earth — 

Made mine and thine and birthright of earth all. 

1 had my splendid secret with the rest. — 
Can such truth truly be ; and cease to be ? 



LOVE POEMS 



VI 

I, WHO have dwelt (for thou didst find me so) 

In souls of most men else, did I forget 

Sudden the proxihood : and learn mine own ? 

I, was I strong to sense the personal lives 

Of brains and hearts not mine ; yet was so weak 

As to desire a life of brain and heart 

For mine : nor feel it in the lives of these ? 

Ought I but love their loves, call those mine own ; 

Leave thee to read and smile and nod approof ; 

Nor tell mine own tale — brain, heart, hope : and hell ? 

'T were somewhat, to be crazed of an own grief, 
Ay ; and be ashen of a burning wish ! 



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VII 

1 PLEAD not, urge not. Only ; if thy soul 
Setteth toward sacrifice, would save a world 
By any martyrdom, I point a way 
Plain to an uttermost accomplishment. 
If thou wouldst enter in and be at peace 
Anywhere, anywise : do thou but bid me 
Swift to thy hand, encompassing about 
Thy footstep, ordering an universe 
To be thy benison : me, strong to serve 
Only by virtue of thy saving need ! 

I plead but for the chance that thou wilt plead. 
How would I save thee : praising any pain ! 



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LOVE POEMS 



VIII 

T IS thus it hurts — not wholly for mine own : 

Though that were desperate — but for thy heart, 

That it should feel a speechless sufferance 

Of ravening ; and this my suffering 

Be helpless to amend one throb of thine. 

This were the anguish — lo ! when all my soul 

Burns, agonizes to assuage each least 

Desire of thine, to see thy soul thus sick 

Of my same woe : that god-love uncreate 

Which broods, yea, broods : will not be comforted. 

Yet, well thou knowest what my grief must be. 
Haply thy pity will assuage thine own ? 



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IX 

Ay, what if so this utmost sympathy 
Of thine for my grief, of my grief for thee, 
Be just such plasmic germ as quickening may 
Flower to a full community of joy ? 
Behold ! my soul is wholly thus this grief ; 
And thine, if I interpret thee aright. 
Wholly this grief : that thou in suffering 
Receivest in thy heart and mind and all 
All that is in me. 

I am nought beside 
Than love and agony : or mine or thine 
I know not. Canst thou then so surely know 
Thy suffering nowise my soul in thee ? 



II 



LOVE POEMS 



Let there be no delusion, dear ! The dawn 
Of friendship fades far past, and now a flame 
Springs in the vault, full-fraught with night and day ! 
Thou, art thou friend, who yieldest in thyself 
Light and the blossoming of all mine earth — 
Else outer darkness and the void ? Art thou 
Friend, yea, or God, who boldest in my soul 
The keys of heaven and hell ; o'er all my being 
Power of life in death — and thou alone ? 
Day and its night ; heaven in hell : are these 
Truths, save of desperate divinity ? — 

Love me, else end me ! There is no choice else ! 



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XI 

LOVE, let the new truth utterly possess 
Thy soul and being ! Womanly accept 
Life thou createst by receiving so ! 
Let the sea tell thee ; and the myriad earth 
Say nought beside ; and sun and stars alike, 
Winds and the canopy of clouds be but 
The one all-love that thou encompassest ! 
Yea, where thou art is presently my soul ; 
And where I am is never far from thee. — 
Pluck thou the daisy-crown of this mid-year ; 
Pull thou its petals wantonly : to learn, 
** He loves me, loves me '* : every ray, the same ! 



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LOVE POEMS 



XII 

Thou spakest of recollection. But I speak 
An instant tragedy of thee and me. 
Our whole life speaks it ; and our life is now. 
Let not the past dead-handed still oppress 
Thy patient spirit, that the grief of now 
Escape thee and its rapture. Let no mood 
Of torpor prey upon thee, that the pain 
Of present passion be benumb'd in thee. 
Livest thou now ; and yet wilt wait to love 
Till only deadness shall abide, where now 
Is mortal need : and mortal-meant appeal ? 

4 

Dearest, I love thee living : not too late. 



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XIII 

Thou hast desired of me that I should make 
This poetry of private grief for thee. 
And duly from the source of infinite loss 
Wells the new word, grateful that thou hast given 
The privilege of speech. And yet were mine 
A world-wide grief that noblier in the speech 
Of seer and sophist to the heart of thee 
Sings an earth-passion, soul and God and all, 
Self-sanction'd, universal- 
Such art thou, 
The unspoken sanctity. Shall not my song 
Make miracle of every soul of earth 
To voice thee in thy worldhood as thy Self ? 



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LOVE POEMS 



XIV 

FOR thus alone were godhead in the song, 
A world of tragedy made lyric too ! 
If nature, earth, and sky, all powers above, 
Below and of the firmament conspire 
To sing thee and to be thy soul in mine, 
How noblier, love, how richlier then the song 
Must owe thee, thy love and thy tragedy 
Made mine in human nature's first and best ? 

** Pilate " S much moved, would search thy soul : yet 

may not. 
" Hegel " S discoursing of the Christhood in us 
Of saviorship, sings but the grace I grasp 
By thee. And ** Mary " ^ meets thee on the hills. 

^The personages of certain religious poems of corresponding 
titles. 



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XV 

Urge me not to concentrate then a sorrow 

Which weeps almost from every leaf and blade 

And every wave of the sea at sob with it ! 

Leave me to brood and bear if so I may 

A grief which equally through every hour 

** Walks with me, sitteth, e*en, and lieth down 

**Companionably *', sooth, and comforting. 

What were the gain could I but banish quite 

This passion from the generality 

Of daily things ? — A world without thy soul 

For comfort ; and thyself so piercing sad 

'T were past imagining. World-grief were best. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XVI 

And yet I '11 scarce admit the grief were less 
Subtly acute, for being distributed 
Through souls of many men and cognisance 
Of multiple philosophies. T were but 
That I, being thus less isolate, must find 
Solace and strength in social self-respect. 
What were my private self to bear alone 
The splendor or the agony ? What 1 
Sole, to revere and worship thee without 
Support and proxihood of whom respect, 
Honor and dignity must needs attend ? 
And in their strength I bear the strongest grief. 



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XVII 

Prate I of proxihood ? The thought of thee 
Privily comes upon me, and the world 
Is burn'd to one intense white heart of thee 
Or me, I know not ! And the sight of thee 
Is blood-beats, pulsings of a tiger-wrath 
Strong to devour thy very frame and all ! 
Lo! it is I, I who am wholly thou ! 
And it is thou who Art, thou whom I mean ! 
Swear by thy grief, protest by all thy gods 
Thou wilt not : and I swear by thy true self, 
Thou lovest, lovest me as I love thee — 
Even with a wrath that brooks not vicarage ! 



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LOVE POEMS 



XVIII 

Sweet, I am sick with shame that I have spoke 
Such passionate speech : where only reverence 
And worship should disturb thee. I have troubled 
The pool of thy deep patience ; and stand mute 
Before the angel of thy proffered peace. 

Though, dwelt there ever utmost reverence 

And perfect worship in the soul, but spake 

The whole man with them ; if transfigured quite, 

Yet none less moved, even through hell's abyss. 

By heaven's own splendor ? Shall the depths lie bare 

And be not startled ? — Angel, but receive 

The passion with the worship : both, for pure. 



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XIX 

Ah ! for the fashion of our flesh is such 

That any energy refused and thwart 

Turns inward, preying as with lust and wrath 

On that which bore it. And I stand bewray'd 

In every act, each effort-energy 

Of all in the world, and only in myself 

Raven by mad imaginings. I fail 

Of any dignity or self-control 

And am as one unworthy of thy sight. 

Yet, be the angel — thou that profferest peace ! 
Lift me to thee and prove the worm I am, 
Thy seraph, whole and wonderful and high ! 



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LOVE POEMS 



XX 

Love, I would pray thy pardon too in this, 
That all my words are still of thee and me. 
Fain wouldst thou course the converse into dreams 
Indifferent, fain interpret through thy world 
Some child-enjoyment of the face of things. 
And fain would I abet thee. But we are 
So otherwise than children, thou and I ! 
There is a real-world ; and the face of things 
Hath soul ; and man and woman are we now, 
Past help. Lo ! and this soul of everything. 
This meaning of the world's reality 
And manhood : this thou knowest, Child of God ! 



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XXI 

1 HAVE received of thee a gentlest gift 
Meant to be earnest of thy charity. 
The grace accorded is accepted so 
As thou intendest. But thy gift to me 
Is life itself, a daily, hourly boon 
Of breath to breathe, light to the eyes of me. 
Warmth, motion, impact to the subtlest pulse 
Call'd mine ; and this, such infinite charity. 
Given and accepted without cost for thee 
By godliest emanation ! How much more 
Shalt thou be godly, giving thy whole self 
To my life ! May I faint not, overwhelmed ! 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXII 

LOVE, I am bound to thee by love's best vow 
Thy celibate and priest. The daily prayer 
Pours ceaseless ; and the penitential psalm 
Chanteth thy praise to perpetuity. — 
What peace of conscience in the faith confessed ! 
What sanctity of spirit in the calm, 
Clear gleam of sacrificial flame from this 
Thy fane ! I minist'ring am more than man 
If less than deity ! 

The altar breathes 
With passion of devotion. The rich rite 
Seems mine own soul at incense : yea, even I 
Myself, thy temple builded without hands ! 



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XXIII 

And, if the god absent him for awhile, 
What cause for consternation ? Stands not still 
Myself this temple, very house of him ? 
Lives not the faith ; shall not the rite endure 
Firm by a full assurance ? — Ay, some hour 
Shall there a light be, seen beneath the dome ; 
Within the fane, a voice of holiness 
And infinite sanctity. And swift at once 
Fane, temple wake enraptured where the god 
Liveth, transfiguring, transfused of all ! 

Love, though the vow be the vow's sole reward, 
It is enough. — Love's faith is everything. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXIV 

Why should rebuke be mine that I impute 

Divinity to thee and saviourship ? — 

Were Christ not human ? Saved He not the world ? 

Wherefore, art thou (of all of womankind 

The humanest) most like to Christ in this 

That thou art saviour of my life and soul. 

What were a God that were not I and Thou 

To inwardmost belief ? And what were we 

Did not the heart accept for very truth 

A mutual saviourship creator-wise ? 

Lies not my soul's abyss made bare to thee 

That thou shalt brood o' the void: and bring forth light ? 



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XXV 

If ways of the world would mean thee, but the more 
Art thou the way, the truth and only life 
Of all things : yea, as God before world was : 
Nay, even as God Who is Himself as each. 
And only so is any God or world ! 
Shall I have fear that God will hide His face 
Even from Himself, Whose very nature is 
Self-searching ? Shall world's mutual response 
Of each to each be to my soul denied 
Whose every conscience is of thee alone ? 
Lo ! I will have great courage ; and this faith 
That God is in thee : Who will work for right. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXVI 

Lady, it is as if thou drewest a sword 
Sudden to smite me, whilst that at the gleam 
Of the weapon (nay, but at the weapon-flash 
Of the swift hate within thee !) I had swoon'd 
And left thee foeless : I, dead at thy feet ; 
Thine arm enfrustrate by the offenceless air. — 
And mine offence is that I love thee still 
After rebuffal through these life-long days. 

Have patience, love, awhile ; possess thy soul 
If but a moment. For I love thee so 
I will endure thine eyes ; stung by their strength 
Will start and stand — for thee to strike me through ! 



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XXVII 

In measure as my faith in thee is strong 
Makest thou trial and default of it : 
Denying love, yet bidding me accept 
Truth of denial. For the more my love 
(And love or faith alike is wholly thine !), 
The more is love the truth of thee ; and this 
An error that thou offerest for belief. 

Believe the paradox ! At worst it were 
A custom and a frailty not uncouth 
For love to find love yet in everything. 
Wherefore, if love be truth of everything 
And thou be all — how reconcile the lie ? 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXVIII 

In sooth, the untruth was not always thine. 
Believe, love, love sees trulier ; and thine hour 
Of insight hath been when thy word and deed, 
Speaking thy soul, portray'd no paradox 
Nor offer'd any crucifix to faith ! 

I do believe that thou art purblind now, 
Since thou insistest on thy nescience. 
Only I ask thee, if love be but source 
Of every information, how thy sight. 
Being loveless, so assures of any truth ? 
Thy " Neti, Neti ", can it wisely mean 
** I love not '*, if oi heart thou dost not love ? 



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XXIX 

Thy ** Neti, Neti ", this it were that seems 

Some formula, some funerary cult 

Spoke in a mystic sense of some one dead. 

It bears no living meaning to the ear 

Of one who knows the vital fact of soul. 

To one who knoweth thee it meaneth nought 

Save some bewilderment and mystery. 

Beloved, I toil : but nowise well-ordain'd 

Unto a ministry ; not girded for 

Any salvation. Yet not wholly waste. 

Haply against the hour when that I 've wrought 

Shall rectify itself in thy re-birth. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXX 

And how cease utterance, when all beside, 

Save utterance in toneless-tragic speech, 

Be utterly forbidden to my love ? 

For what were love which never moved its world, 

Was never moved, but bided, bided still 

A simulacrum or a vacancy. 

But nothing loving ? — Dear, and thus I wait. 

Speaking, though otherwise not troubling thee : 

A Memnon vocal to thy distantness. 

Dear, for thou scoff 'dst : *' 'T were chiefly, as I find, 

** Thy presence that prevents. Thy screed I love ! " — 

I yield thee absence. Love, what now precludes? 



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XXXI 

LOVE, but mine eyes must see thee and mine ears 
Hear thee anew, so be it I may make sure 
Thou art the very woman whom I love. 
For she was of a perfect intimacy 
In me, anticipating every pain 
And learning every agony, untold. 
And she responded to each human need 
With voice for voice, ay, with an harmony 
Which heal'd ; and, being inspired but to restore 
A soul to sanity, sang from the soul. 

But thou within my heart art vague and blind, 
And canst not even answer to thy name. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXXII 

How long, beloved, will thy heart belie 
Thy soul's divinity ? O love, how long ? 
Here be the great days of remaining youth, 
Whilst still is hope of some high destiny 
(With thee, how high a destiny indeed !) 
And souls should be at labor to bring forth 
Abiding worth. Yet here I mutely wait, 
Too desolate, daily incapable 
Of any least accomplishment ; for none 
Are worth the lonely labor, nor the pain 
Of enterprise unshared with thee. And thou ? 
Art thou then quite content that things are so ? 



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XXXIII 

Life lieth in the hollow of thy hand 

To give and take ; to take unto thyself 

By giving utterly. And with the gift 

Will come new strength and new accomplishment, 

Doubly divine for me or thee : for both. 

Were it a strange and vast nobility, 

Could we apart, each with a separate craft, 

Create some splendor ? Were the tragedy 

Uplifting, searching, to suffice for both ? 

Dear, nought sufficeth, save our love, to lift 
Me from a mire of meanness. Shalt thou say : 
** No Poet shall be moulded of my love *' ? 



35 



LOVE POEMS 



XXXIV 

LOVE, men have mock'd me, scoffing: ** He but dwells 

** In unreality, a realm of dream 

** All incommunicable ; for its stuff 

'* Is alien to our human sympathy.'* 

And I have patiently but laid mine hand 

On this or the other solid stone of earth 

To touch it and, if dream there truly was, 

Be waked out of the dream and sane with men. 

Yet no awakening cometh ; and these stones 

Seem very stone-like as I touch them, dear. 

Ay, no awakening ! And this world of thine, 

That means ** I will not ", scoffs there, mocking me. 



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XXXV 

For, lo ! I, weary of the touch of stone 
In all things, put my hand forth as a man 
To feel thy woman-hand, and be — not waked - 
But healingly confirmed in that high faith 
Men call a dream and alien. And my hand 
Stretcheth : but all that showeth of vital power 
Is shadow ; and the substance nowhere seen. 

Even as, beloved, in a blessed sleep 
I dream'd in truth thou lovedst ; and mine eyes 
Were all one golden light and in my soul 
Was splendor as of morning. — Dear, I woke. 
The sun had risen. Forsooth, it was the day ! 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXXVI 

Strange, should I learn to laugh contemptuous 
On thee, that thou imaginest my love 
Should wither with this withering of thee ! — 
If, as thou sayest, mine heart did ne'er know thee, 
Did never feel thy fire, nor take thy truth. 
Nor see within thy splendor ; if mine eyes 
Created thine out of the night and day. 
Mine ears devised thy music, and my hands 
Held stone at parting and at greeting thee : 
How should thine alteration touch my love ? 

Strange, should thine alteration breed contempt 
And justify while still refuting thee ! 



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XXXVII 

Out of the depths, deep as the naked soul 
1 cry to thee : and there is none to hear. 
For the god sleepeth ; or adventureth 
A journey ; or hath never need of ears ; 
Or, hearing, will not hear. And still I cry. 
Nay, from the depths I mounting by my soul 
Aspire to stand before thee, that thine eyes 
May see and help thee hear (as the deaf use) 
The anguish by this agony of prayer. 
And I have knelt within thy very gaze 
Unseen as still unheard. 

I thank thee, dear. 
What worse-than-sorrow : shouldst thou hear and see ! 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXXVIII 

FOR, shouldst thou know the passion and the shame 
Wherethrough this soul upreacheth still to thee ; 
Shouldst thou but sense the Hell wherefrom I strain 
To touch thee and be human — in that hour 
Wouldst thou awake indeed and hurl me back 
Down, down a-howling whence I might not breathe 
(Like Satan whom the flame-bursts alone feed) ; 
So saving thy soul by true death of mine ! — 
Or in that hour might some new strength bestir 
To reach me and uphold whom only thou 
Canst teach salvation ? Dearest, wouldst thou learn 
Create mine heaven : yet nowise *spoil thine own ? 



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XXXIX 

Sweet, for the soul of man is high as God 

If lower still than Satan. And no soul 

Is past salvation. And no soul that stoops 

To save need fear but God is stooping too. 

I, in and of the abyss, yet know myself 

Divine by thus aspiring to thee ; 

By thee and through thee is my conscience clean, 

My breast a seraph's in the sight of all. 

Thus, if thou stoopest, bringing with thee breath 

Of heaven's own spaces, shalt thou lift at last 

An unclean thing that shall contaminate 

Even thee ? Or shalt thou doubly be divine ? 



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LOVE POEMS 



XL 

So in the metaphor of many a creed 

We speak forth love, earth's common miracle. 

So with the meaning of a lover's heart 

I find truth in imaginings untrue 

Save to their faith that frees them. I, un worth 

To lace the latchet of thy shoe, may yet 

Mouth of the powers of heaven as of hell : 

Heaven, thy daily breathing-room ; as hell, 

But mine ensufferance. And I dare deny 

My birthright of contempt, giving earth name 

Which seers have known and loved life by. 

And borrow 
Assurance of the name ; and worship thee. 



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XLI 

FOR thou art not **as earth's horizon-verge 

** A limit " to my life and still afar. 

But thou art very near, more near than aught 

Hand toucheth or sight taketh outwardly. 

Ears, though they hear, are not thy dwelling-place. 

But as the daily, hourly intercourse 

Of conscienced enterprise through every act 

Doth mutually intropermeate 

Earth spirit-wise through every spirit of earth ; 

Even in the nearness as the verge of things, 

Life's outwardness that meaneth inwardly 

But inwardness : art thou, — What else were God ? 



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LOVE POEMS 



XLII 

Therefore, a little absence, doth it end 

The power and purpose of thy soul in mine ? 

Though I am wrack 'd and worn, that speech with thee 

Would shake me as a reed ; though the heart break 

At every casual inference of thee 

In each environment nor thee nor thine — 

Art thou less with me that thou carest not ? 

Doth not my love fare forth to wing with thee 

Whither thou wilt, learning anew her world 

By sympathy in every walk of thine ? 

Fare the world over, shall my heaven-in-hell 
Attend thee : and thine omnipresence stand. 



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XLIII 

Behold ! my spirit is spread with thee beyond 
Boundaries of the north or of the east ! 
Earth is as nothing to the heart of thee ! 
Big by thy breath's afflatus swells my soul 
To power, performance and accomplishment 
Of all that stands work-worthy. And the world 
Seems worth the labor in the love of thee ! 

Set thou the trophy : and the meed I claim 
Art thou, the preordained of my love. 
State thou the terms of service : and I swear 
The stint completed ere thy speech shall cease. — 
Or state them not : and 'tis to move the world ! 



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LOVE POEMS 



XLIV 

Thou sayest (withholding comfort) that thy care 
Must be for truth's sake — did I ask aught else ? 
Dear, have I sued that thou shouldst live a lie ; 
Or lend thee to a fraud no soul should speak 
Of man or woman to give comfort in it ? 

When did I outrage truth in learning thee ? 

Or tell thee false that thou shouldst fool thine ear ? 

Only, hast thou not heard yet ? Knowest thou not 
The name I call thee by that best means thee ? 
If thou wilt love and lend thy whole soul to it 
Shall not thy care, so surely comforting, 
Be then most surely for the sake of truth ? 



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XLV 

Was it with poor excuse of easing thee 
One atom of thy pain that I profess'd 
This undertaking of these songs of love ? 
Was there pretence that I by any mean 
Might stifle self to furnish voice to thee ? 
A sorry mummery ! Might tongue so false 
Be fitted to thine utterance ? Speaks the soul 
By any puppetry ? — Love, if the song 
Hath moved thee anywhither ; anywise 
Been ease and solace to thee ; 't is but truth 
That makes the miracle : my love for thee 
At labor in thy soul to bring forth love. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XLVI 

Dear, and perchance a whispering untoward 
Hath sneer'd : ** His soul is but a voyager. 
** My love to-day ; to-morrow, any heart's 
*' That neighbors him in his excursioning ! 
** An heart so deft to snatch at any straw 
** Needs no salvation else ; is skill'd to swim : 
** May sink — for all his outcry to my soul ! ** 

A wanderer, indeed, and well-nigh done 
In this his desperate search ; an heart so used 
To prove straws, straws ; that any helping hand 
Had seem'd but mockery. — What last good chance 
That Thou didst never lean : to loose thine hold ! 



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XLVII 

AND yet I rise beside thee and I find 

Thee home and haven : and belong with thee. 

If of the stranger and the homeless house 

I long have suffered hospitality, 

If of the blank sea I have still outstared 

Innumerable meaningless dismays 

To mock me with imagined peace at last ; 

Am not I but the wiselier skill'd to know 

The authentic sign, the genuine report 

Of sight and reason to the journey's end ? 

If of the world I voyage still a space 

Who may not dwell with thee : know I not Home ? 



49 



LOVE POEMS 



XLVIII 

If I in speech have been unfaithful to thee, 
Or misdirected any deed from thee, 
Neglected thee in thought or follow'd after 
The sweetness of another soul than thine : 
Forgive me ; an there be aught to forgive ! 

From now, no more : I vow thee ! — Were there 

though 
Blameworthiness in following thy command ? 
Sin, in abjuring so a God untoward 
Whose worship were prohibited of Him ? — 
Yet shall I clean me of obedience 
With prayer and fasting ; and be bold before thee, 
Fearing not thee : for all thy holiness. 



50 






AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



XLIX 

LOVE ! rather, overlook the poor pretence, 
Forgive the feign'd obedience to thy will. 
The still forsworn forswearing ! And forget 
That I have hidden beyond the seas and sands 
The rites of worship homelier-taught of thee. 
If a strange sun hath taken incense for thee 
And hymns of thee borne but a mystic name, 
If sweetness of thy soul but seem'd too sweet 
In some far hint of how thy heart might love : 
Ignore the self-deception. Nay, accept 
For faithfulness the extreme shift of life 
To save thy people to thy service still. 



51 



LOVE POEMS 



And thou, wouldst thou not scorn the proffer'd zeal 
Of one who lisp'd : ** No beauty in the world 
*' Nor worth is there whereon I 'd wish to look 
** Nor seek to dwell with, save but thine alone ; 
** I who in absolute innocence of love 
*' Now swear I love thee, peerless beyond all 
** Which owe no privilege ! "? Had he fit sense 
Of thee? 

But rather lay I at thy feet 
A worship that proclaimeth every heart 
And soul of earth right worshipful : in thee 
All focuss'd and concentred, sphere in sphere 
Orb'd to love's universal immanence. 



52 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LI 

FOR thus in thy dear person thou dost lead 
Captive the world ; affording world free life ! 
Thus art thou nowise comparable through 
Earth's length and breadth that were but earth at all 
By being contain 'd of thee and so sustain 'd. 
Therefore is meaning, reason and respect 
In faith and worship ; that acknowledgment 
Of thee creates the world, maintains it whole 
By the love-miracle. And any worth 
Declared of earth declareth but of thee 
The wonder and the glory. Love, wert thou 
Loveworthy, were thy world not worthy too ? 



53 



LOVE POEMS 



Lll 

Therefore, to be fit mate unto thy soul, 
Must a man learn to love (so comprehend) 
All things 'soever ; that he well may know 
Thee by the splendor that is wholly thine. 
I from my youth have everywhere, with heart 
Open to understanding, sought to search 
The deepmost soul of things, being of faith 
Soul doth lie deepmost and is soul at last, 
'Soe'er bewrayed and Vilder'd. Shall I now 
Deny soul ? Shall I cease an infinite search 
Through all thy regions, that my reverence 
Hath proved thy godhead in the loved and known ? 



54 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LIII 

LOVE ! for that power which only thou canst give me - 

To toil and be not wearied ; which thy love 

Alone can grant — to fail nor be dismay'd ! 

I from my youth have toil'd and have been wearied ; 

Dear, I have ever fail'd and been dismayed. 

Now hath dismay wholly got hold of me 

And weariness. I toil not nor attempt ; 

But only wait thy mercy and thy word. — 

Nor is it service thus to stand and wait. 

Therefore I most am utterly unworth 

Thy love when most demanding of thee love 

To make me godlike and fit mate for thee. 



55 



LOVE POEMS 



LIV 

Time was when I with firmer fortitude 

And some philosophy was wont to dream : 

** No failure can be where the soul is strong 

** To toil and takes success in work's own sake 

** And needeth no results else.'* If I fail'd 

And stood dismay 'd, I laugh'd : '* 'T were but the fault 

** Of this dismay. On ! with a strength the more 

** Unconquerable that the touch of earth 

*' Hath taught invigoration ! From the mire 

** Were loftier leap to flight than from that mound ! " 

Now that I know thine inspiration, shall 

The leap sink lifeless ? Shall the song be nought ? 



56 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LV 

The singer is not other than the song ; 
Nor is the song, love, other stuff than love 
In every inference. Thou lovest not 
The singer ? Let it be : thou lov*st the song. 
What more might be desired or attain 'd ? 

But, thou wilt say : ** Because I am assured 

** By my self-searching that I love not thee ; 

** Then is thy syllogism strain 'd and false, 

** The logic wanting. Else, the love I feel 

*' Even for the song is never love like thine. — 

** Pardon an heedless word. Such love I mean not.** 

Thus from my soul is taken that it hath. 



57 



LOVE POEMS 



LVI 

Love, once again have I transgress'd the bounds 
Set for the speech of man unto thine ear ; 
Once again begged the benediction of 
Thy lips to mine. Love, canst thou still forgive ? 

Some can kiss lightly : not so thou ; nor L 
Nought can give absolution from the sin 
Of such solicitation ; though thou still 
Forgivest, I can in no wise forgive 
My blasphemy. — 

And yet, were the prayer heard, 
What consecration beyond blasphemy ; 
What perfect absolution ! Still canst thou 
Save me ; ah ! still absolve from every sin. 



58 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LVII 

Call this I ask of thee no trifling boon ; 

But love, the greatest of all things of earth. 

Then, but because thy very soul is great. 

Will this be easy that I ask of thee. 

The saving of my soul. Faith, hope, I have thenic 

*T is charity that thou alone canst give. 

Yet have I charity : for that is life ; 
And life is of the winter as of spring. 
Rouseth the year but by the year's own power 
Of earth-resuscitance sustained of earth ? 
Shall my soul wait thee, when thy soul in mine 
Is quick-responsive to each hour of need ? 



59 



LOVE POEMS 



LVIIl 

This miserable pleading with thy soul, 
Forgive it as all earth forgives the prayer 
Of murder'd autumn ! Could the season yield 
Sense to the stroke, and not in one last flash 
Of outraged blood betray the heart that beats 
Most hotly by the anguish ? If the life 
Stains forest-floor and cloud-rack with the hue 
Of martyrdom, shall blame be that the world 
Dies unrecanting and unreconciled ? 

Pray thou that thy forgiveness reach me deep, 

Deep as the unrelenting agony : 

And hearten me to die as the dropt leaf. 



60 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LIX 

Love, now in autumn woods I, with thee walking, 
Weep the lost springtime that so sweetly brought 
Thee to the threshold of my soul ; and summer 
That saw thee consciously enshrined of it. 
This other season, is it fruit of those ? 
Are these thy woman's Words and thy loved ways 
Which crumble and are dust beneath the feet 
Of any wayfarer ; which, while the light 
Blared and the day were torrid-parch'd without, 
Spread for a solace to my private soul ? 
Was thy care nature's, with the weeks to pass ? 
Shall winter rack me leafless and alone ? 



bl 



LOVE POEMS 



LX 

Though, would I change one word of all thy truth 

Hath said ; or have thee other than thou art 

By any subterfuge ? Must not thy soul 

Grow as the changes of the season 'd year ? 

1 gaze abroad ; and mark how intimate 

This harshening of the forest ; how her speech 

Is frank if not so fair, and nature's dearth 

Duly reveal'd bespeaks but chastening 

Toward nobler birth. — Shall not my heart accept 

The forest-omen ; sepulchre my soul 

To terrible endurance, till a surge 

Of re-birth wake and wrap me with thy spring ? 



62 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LXI 

I FEEL the still snows sifting over me, 

Shrouding the scars of earth and brooding all 

In crystal benediction. Over me 

The wroth stream stiffens and the torrent takes 

An immortality of moveless force ; 

And all things are as iron. Here some gale 

Lashes aloft a sleet and stinging storm ; 

But rives no roots from out the vise and grasp 

That is my spirit. If a stricken groan 

Gasps from the rigid sap-wood — 't is not mine. 

My life is ended till the year hath moved. 

Thou canst take up that thou alone laid'st down. 



63 



LOVE POEMS 



LXII 

Thus in the weak year's frenzied metaphor 

I face the disenchantment ; front the world 

With one wan yearning to be hale and free 

In winter's way of self-dependence still 

Who scarce may quicken sunward. How the rack'd 

And feverish spirit turns refresh 'd and firm 

To stand alone of frost and be of will 

To buffet and be busied ; brutally 

To do the day's insensate task and toil ! 

How noblest, to be mad for love of thee ; 
And not do madly ! How beyond all praise, 
To worship yet deny thee for my God ! 



64 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LXIII 

I, WHO am daily deeper drawn within 

The shadow as of sin born in the blood ; 

Who from the blackness of self-cynicism 

And vile world-weariness descry thy stars ; 

Cry to thee : '* Lo ! Lord, save thy people still ! '* 

Should all the best and dearest, upon earth 
Remaining, die about me : and I live ; 
Should every undertaking all-wise fail 
As presently have fail'd me all my works : 
And I still labor ; I might deem me saved 
And thee a living God as formerly ! — 
But now what sign assures me that 1 love ? 



65 



LOVE POEMS 



LXIV 

I FEEL upon my lips a look like thine 

I had not understood till latterly. 

And in mine eyes (what shone in thine like love !) 

A searching misery : for the vacant world 

Is passionate and bitter ; and I learn 

Thee by the suffering so like to thine. 

And as I learn thee hour by hour, and know 
The desperate-sweet abysses of thy soul, 
Space by space with the insight waxeth loss ; 
Deathlike, though vital in the sympathy. 
For I, I may but breathe and be at last 
Only by utterly forswearing thee. 



66 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LXV 

So hath the year come round wherein my love 
Did spring and blossom and send leafage forth 
And strike deep root in earth ; and wither with 
The season's withering ; and die away 
And lie in snow sepulchred. And the spring 
Is delicate over earth ; and myriad buds 
Push forth to feed on warmth and light : a film 
Of hope before the eyes, and through the air 
A gossamer radiance of vitality. — 
I see these signs, as leaves look shuddering up 
Out of some forest-charnel, whom the drift 
Thawing reveals to rot in dimness there. 



67 



LOVE POEMS 



LXYI 

For I am nothing in the round of earth. 

Her strength sweeps over me and surges by 

My soul fast buried, ay, though bare and blown 

As any weed-husk. If by dreaming toward 

The faint confusion I imagine days 

Of beauty and splendor still to come for earth ; 

If by compulsion of my sapless cells 

And frost-stript fibres I may fondly feel 

The life lost yester-year yet wonderful 

Elsewhere and otherwise than as I lie — 

'T is all. The sun in heaven proves dark, with thee 

And these my seeds are barren from their birth. 



68 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LXVII 

LOVE, even in the moment of a death 

That voided earth, sprang still the power of thee 

Insistent, vital. If world ended not 

With such an end, then nought that is of breath 

Can anywise deny thee. Could the dead 

Know thee, they were arisen full of life. 

Yet, love, the wearying, wearying-out of love ! 

The terrible insistency of death 

To take at last even the life of life 

And leave a gasping after vacantness ! — 

The void swoons in. Were I a thing of breath 

'T were otherwise. The dead cannot know thee. 



69 



LOVE POEMS 



LXVIII 

I FELT, when the stiff, simulated fate 
Seized on my sinews and the pulse-beats paused, 
Breath-labor ceased and every sense swoon'd off, 
Then that I was permitted to proclaim 
Protest supreme at life's intolerable 
Indifference to intolerable death. 
And yet what protest so were possible ? 
What yielding thus to death were any cure 
For death's injustice ? — And the life return'd : 
Lifting me chasten'd and subdued to bear 
The uttermost injustice love can know : 
Nor ask that any enter protest for me. 



70 



AN ANNUAL CYCLE 



LXIX 

Unto all souls that sorrow be my sorrow 

For expiation that I ever sought 

An happiness ; my grief beyond all grief 

Be unto grief a last apology ! 

Lo ! with what hush'd and awful penitence 

I, bow'd by disappointment as a cloud, 

Yearn to that ultimate companionship 

Of them that sit in darkness. And the shadow 

Of somewhat more than darkness bred before me 

Spreads gloom ; vouchsafes assurance how with them 

1 sit me down forgiven : in the dust 

And ashes ashen ; reconciled with death. 



71 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 

I 

Beloved, it is too true I was not fit 

To stand before thee, saying, ** Here am 1 ! " 

The manner of my life was not as now 

A glad thank-offering, nor mine inmost soul 

(Save as thou hadst fill'd erst the vast of it !) 

A space of consecration. And my life 

(But for the truth life once belong'd to thee) 

Was void dispersion ; and mine energy 

Of soul some dispossess'd perplexedness 

Daily degenerating out of strength. — 

Nay, that some song had seem'd approved of thee 

But made a misery of the dream of it. 



73 



LOVE POEMS 



II 

Behold, I was as nothing in myself 
Save as I tended toward thee. And when thou 
Withdrewest unto thyself and didst deny 
My birthright of approach unto thy soul ; 
Forbad 'st access, and madest of my prayer 
Crime against reason : then each hour by hour 
Was my distracted motion turn'd away 
From my best self and substance ; that my life 
Was loss each hour by hour, losing earth all 
With thee ; my faith, my reaching out to thee 
But proven mine isolation : in each act 
Frustration of an aimless fmitude. 



76 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



III 

FOR, as the world of old cosmology 
Defined of form and motion, I 'd aspired 
With seeming guarantee of goal divine 
Through manifestation many and diverse 
In preordain'd succession : dreaming on 
A progress, an enfolding of my past 
In that which springeth from it presently 
To new ennoblement. And, like that world, 
BetrayM by sudden orphanage from thee 
I waked to degradation ; feeling each 
Necessitated onward ness some loss 
Of vital potency from what had been. 



77 



LOVE POEMS 



IV 

And, though in hours of insight I had known 

The refutation of their fault involved 

In any definition of a world 

As soulless mechanism — how, without 

Mind is the mechanism but metaphor 

For teleology extrinsic to it ; 

And but by teleology of force 

Intrinsic to each individual fact 

Were mass at all mechanic in itself 

(Only by thee within me were I whole) — 

Yet for the hour was mine emotion mad 

With strength-dispersion in each act of me. 



78 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



True, I had known how every least impact, 
Even by its wide impulse illimitable, 
Concludeth in the essence of each part. 
As it is part, the substance of the whole ; 
And thus alone were any whole defined. 
By comprehension inwardly of each 
By each throughout love's wisdom-universe. 
Love, I had known love and the logic-law 
Delimiting, discriminating love 
In constitution of the truth call'd soul : 
Yet, feeling not soul's self-creativeness 
Beyond loss, I was as one dispossess'd. 



79 



LOVE POEMS 



VI 

Love, in the earlier light, illusive proved, 
Each effort (as some flowering of faith) 
Seem'd concentration, each to new consent, 
Of all toward thee ; each, cumulative proof 
Anew of worth and wonder, dignity 
And rapture at thy ruling. And everywhere 
Seem'd new-won manifestation, new-defming 
Divinity of thee. The world had growth, 
Warranting, if but by the hope divine 
That look'd before and after, even that sense 
Of incompletion which the past must show. 
Each act seem'd victory — for all its cost. 



80 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



VII 

And victory, alone by costing sore. 
The inevitable failure to obtain 
Any consent from thee, the God I 'd move, 
Though guarantee at worst that I through thee 
Felt fate-reality, yet point by point 
Frustrated each accomplishment, debarr'd 
My strength from soulhood ; left me in myself 
Self-thwart and baffled : only in that sense 
Of terrible discontent yet nobler than 
Their pure degenerate automatism 
Void of all conscience of unworthiness. 
For my degeneracy was still — mine own. 



81 



LOVE POEMS 



VIII 

And therefore when at last thou didst destroy 

All vestige of thy loved divinity, 

Didst wipe from the world at a word each symbol, sign 

And imputation of the creed I 'd known ; 

Then was I fallen beneath despair at last, 

A soulless thing, an atom-vacancy, 

A maelstrom with no meaning : nought to move, 

Nought to be moving. And the unceasing song 

(For song, though shamed, remained to show I still 

Lived) was of nothing living : only death 

Was burden of the voice that still spake thee. 

And but for song had I been wholly dead. 



82 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



IX 

But : with the miracle that song remained 
Over, beyond my mere mechanic breath 
(That someway was an unity unknown 
Required of faith to make conceivable 
The very isolation); and with a true 
Development, within the thought of death, 
Of life the all-containing self-contain'd : 
Awoke in me wiselier the deity 
Of thee as of some immanence, unlike 
A goal beyond my striving : but attain'd 
With every impact of activity, 
In so far forth as altering my world. 



83 



LOVE POEMS 



X 



It were not that an immanence not I 
Pervadeth broadcast through an outer earth 
Or thee or not-thee as the chance might stand. 
For then wert thou else deity but of stone, 
Else pre-establish 'd as some truth-for-all 
Unvitalizing, undefined at last 
By any effort : hence, no truth of mine. 
T were rather that each personal intent 
Were ineffectual, earth were anarchism, 
Save for thy mutualizing unity. 
An unioning itself defined (thy truth 
Love-comprehended) by each act of me. 



84 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



XI 

And therefore, in so far as strength might stir 

To some accomplishment, conserved I thee ; 

And, finding day by day beneath mine hand 

This, that, or other opportunity 

For action ; was I as a world sustain'd 

Even by the infinity which had seem'd loss, 

Even by the interminability of change 

Proceeding outward through an universe 

From each least impact of each part on part 

(Thereby made whole, my part through thee ! ) ; thereby, 

By being as fact infinitesimal, 

Not isolate but infinite, each truth. 



85 



LOVE POEMS 



XII 

And therefore since, without the former shame 
Of imperfection striving but toward thee 
Nor as by isolation utterly 
Debarred from thee, I learn thy saving truth 
As essence of my being and know thee 
For immanent although thou bidest apart : 
Therefore for thee now fit (as earth for earth's 
Own absolution) 'fore thy face I stand 
Saying : '* Thou life within me, here am I !" — 
I was not alway so. But I have come 
Through orphanage from thee ; and am as one 
Whom fire hath purged and fear hath clarified. 



86 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



XIII 



FOR now I dream not with the formal creeds : 

** This is of thee, O God, this hint of love. 

'* And this, this implication of an hell, 

**This lovelessness is nothing of thy deed." 

Nor with the nescience of their modern cant 

I cry : '* Heart scarce may know thee. Thou art nought ; 

** Else art some mystery beyond man's sight 

** Indifferent to his world." — For then were I 

Unfit for thee, whether in all my ways 

Of godlessness, or as the earlier fault 

That knows not God in His world-tragedy. 

But I, I learn thee in each hour I live. 



^7 



LOVE POEMS 



XIV 

Wherefore am I most fit to stand before thee 
With the unceasing prayer : ** Love, here am L' 
Though I be as the basest of the unclean 
(And who, in speech unto thy sanctity. 
Were better than blasphemer ?), must I be 
Nevertheless ennobled, as thy sight 
Is mine ; as to the pure all things are pure. 
Wherefore I do avow : ** I am not fit.'* 
Even as this desperate passionate poor world 
Stands overtly unworthy of the soul 
Which constantly conserves and self-redeems 
Its loss and nescience unto absolute worth. 



88 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



XV 

Thus too 1 speak the truth out unto thee 

As to an oracle and confessional 

From one whose conscience of acknowledged sin 

Placeth his heart in power and purity 

To teach thine obligation to thy world. 

Though I have call'd thee oracle, I prove 

No oracle nor any world-withdrawn 

Mysterious equivocality 

Divine. If I, by being of the earth earth, 

Have conscience of divinity through thine, 

Then must thou, to be inmostly thyself 

A god, have conscience of thy world in me. 



89 



LOVE POEMS 



XVI 

So till the end make I to thee my song 
And pray to thee : ** Beloved, here am V* — 
Insistent : that this fire and fear (wherethrough 
I as the modern thought of men am come — 
Through losing God and with their god all worth 
Of worldhood ; and through darkness that is felt 
Of nescience — now anew am come to thee), 
That this thy world, proving divinity, 
May enter in and new-defme thy spirit 
Unto reciprocation. For without 
The world as thou hast made it art thou nought. - 
Beloved, my life is love. Be thine but so. 



90 



POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 



XVII 

FOR, though the tragedy of earth be still 

Thy meaning, and divine, though there be nought 

That is not of thee, yet hath earth degrees 

Of God-accomplishment, and earth would fain 

Be saved from self by self's own cognizance 

Of new- won consecration through thy soul. 

Hence, when I pray thee : ** Be thou of this world 

*' Savior in thine own sight by entering in 

** To this my tragedy of me and thee '% 

I ask thee not some bitter sacrament ! 

I ask thee but to lift unto thy lips 

The poison-cup to find it fill'd with wine. 



91 



LOVE POEMS 



XVIIl 

Ah ! for, though in my bitterness of heart 

(Like orphanM earth, save for sad consciousness 

Of the very orphanage) I seem'd to thee 

Deservedly an outcast from thy sight ; 

And though these orisons wherewith my soul 

Seeks rehabilitation may to thee 

Seem as some sophistry ; I cannot yield 

That I, who know myself to love thee well, 

When loved by thee shall show by any sign 

Failure of full reciprocal desert 

To save thee as thy service saves me now. 

So thy creation singeth : creating thee. 



92 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 

MID-OCEAN 

Once again call the leagues unto my soul : 
** Be thou, as wave and froth of the white sea, 
** No more a sufferer station 'd, but a power 
** Wanton as heaven blown over the earth 
** Strong, saline, health -fiird, unconfmable 
**To freshen and renew and be alive 
** With world's on-moving ! " Once again I take 
The heave and throb that proves an onward pulse 
And plunge of this sea-monster. 

And the verge 
Of the east shall mean thee and the rising sun : 
Even as this sun that sinks now in the west 
With thee to slumber — while I wake and move. 



95 



LOVE POEMS 



THE GULF OF LYONS 

Behold ! a barrier of antiquity 

Thrust in between us ! For myself have pass'd 

The Pillars ; and am borne of this blue gulf, 

The Carthaginian Sea. And one long year 

Is blotted from my life since last I stood 

Before the Pillars, paused and entered not 

But turn'd and plough'd a pathway home — to thee ! 

Now hath my home forsaken me. 1 turn, 
Sick though at soul ; pause not ; but enter in 
And feel the ancient world so near alive 
Without me : that within me thy loved year 
Drops dead. And Carthage only sails with me. 



96 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



VESUVIUS 

Yet how the passion of earth and agony, 

Though issued in a thousand awful streams 

Of fire to shake and shatter, buried deep, 

A civilization ; and though sepulchring 

Cered dust through centuries ; spring born at last 

To some new purpose, some support of hope 

And trust in human duty. — Lo ! what dream 

Of peace, luxuriant serenity, 

Yon vineyarded Sorrento smiling, yea, 

On earth's avenger. Ay, and that wasp-work 

Call'd Pozzuoli plaster'd on the hills. 

And Ischia, chasten'd yet imperishable. 



97 



LOVE POEMS 



POMPEII 

Though, be the last prayer of mine ashen soul 
That none unbury what this love hath burnt ! 
Live the world as it will ; upwake my heart 
To laughter and dancing and earth's green anew 
(Mocking dead days imprison'd and the passion 
Sodden and cloddish that bears down upon them): 
Be the long years ensuing what they will 
Of bright vitality — mine hour is run 
Of faith and power and beauty. I would lie 
Rather choked up with dust that was a flame ; 
Than stir and rouse me, move and breathe about 
A stranger under heaven : my charr'd soul, cold ! 



98 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



^TNA 

Yet art thou still a spirit above all 
This froth and turmoil of the narrow seas 
Tall, angel-vestured and thine head held high, 
Snow-splendid unto heaven and the sun. 
We of the tumult and the desperate straits 
May pray to thee ; may, in the depth of need, 
Leap landward, struggling in Charybdis' swirl : 
And drown or not drown — were it aught to thee ? 

I, who in blessed hours of summer's ease 
Have seen thy clouds snatched as by thine own hand 
Bare from thine heart ; and known thee lean to me 
With overpowering sweetness : need I die ? 



99 



LOVE POEMS 



THE LAND OF GOSHEN 

Nay, I will live, take comfort as I may 
In this low land thy scorn hath left to me, 
Wherein to sojourn till an hour be born 
Of Godhood and of home-return. No home 
Can there be here for me nor for my God ; 
Only a space for tarrying awhile : 
Yet were there lesser gods who here their home 
Had made through countless ages ; here did dwell 
Worshippers somewise, Pharaoh's folk who call'd 
This deep dark earth and fertilizing flood 
Mother and father unto them. — Perchance 
The flesh-pots of the spirit here were full. 



loo 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



THE BUILDERS 

FOR here is history not unlike thine 
Of high endeavor toward divinity- 
Spoilt in an half-creation : this, of power 
Sans soul ; thy faith, of insight but not will. 
Yet thou, like these, conceivedst an altar-place 
Unto the most high God ; and like to these 
Didst build thee temples and adorn thee shrines 
Within the brain and heart and soul of me : 
That all was holy ; that the land had sung 
One cycle of praise and worship. 

Shalt thou let 
Thy temples turn sarcophagi ? Build we 
And cease : and are as these left by the way ? 



lol 



LOVE POEMS 



MOKATTAM 

I 

LOVE, I have sat and seen the sun go down 
On Egypt, pyramid and minaret, 
Stark desert hills, green harvests and the mists 
Of epoch-ancient cities : all of one 
Gold glow ; and heard the noise of beast and man 
Ascending as though earth were new and had not 
Lived through her day and yearn'd still unto night 
That, now descending, ends all. And I feel 
The meaning of those towers that crumble down 
Whilst calling still to heaven ; and of those tombs 
Of some dead man-god which are temple-tombs 
And shall be temples when these homes are not. 



102 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



II 

FOR I have lived the sorrows and the shames 
Of some long mystery ; and in myself 
Been as the passing of a world of kings 
Through many sunsets. And am come to know 
The poignance of yon hearth-smoke that ascends 
In straight, thin air-shafts through the yellowing light 
Mixt with those voices. — And I am alone 
Weighing the wonder of a crumbling heaven 
And death abiding and the dust of things 
And misery : I alone, of these gaunt cliffs. 
Watching the sundown. It was night-time then 
With me and Egypt. — Was it morn with thee ? 



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LOVE POEMS 



THE PYRAMID 

*'Thy shadow on these burning sands shall swing 

** Noon aye and noon ; though all thou heldst of man 

** Shall long be dust. And, with the perishing 

'* Of all he held immortal, shall the creed 

'* Which built thee to contain eternal life 

*' Lift from the world and leave thee nakedly 

** An heap of stone.'* — 

And still my shadow, like 
This desert pile's, out on the desert leaps 
At morning, swings over the barren world 
Till evening lengthens it on homes of men 
In coolness. Yet the creed that built my soul 
Is lifted : and I lie before thee stone. 



104 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



MEMPHIS 

My love was some vast city stretched abroad 
Through league on league. And in me there did dwell 
Grandeur. And all the tribute of the world 
Was wholly mine. Mine early God was not 
As Egypt's lesser gods : but pure and fit 
To stand by Brahma at Jehovah's hand. 

Now there is nothing left of all that was. 
Only some sepulchres ; ay, and, 't is said, 
Some image of the God that men have found 
And kept for chronicle. — And on the earth 
My bulk lies shatter'd. And the desert birds 
Have made a station of mine ears and eyes. 



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LOVE POEMS 



PTAH 

Men have imagined gods. But God is dead. 
The substance of all gods is not as they, 
Creature of time and circumstance ; but His 
Impassibility is absolute. 
And therefore is the grave-cloth, not the crown, 
His symbol ; and His frame is emptiness. 

Love, we have sought through ages to attain 
A godship that is absolute as His, 
No creature : yet, no emptiness, but fill'd 
With world's totality: and named it Love. — 
I had attain 'd and lived. But now my frame 
Is emptiness ; uncrown 'd. And God is dead. 



lo6 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



THE SPHINX 

Sun hath turn'd no full cycle yet since Sphinx 
First gazed on flood and harvest. But the fruit 
Of earth is elsewhere garner 'd than of yore. 
And the great sand encroaches. — 

I, too weak 
To work with world's late power, have lain me here 
'Mid earlier peoples and a morning faith 
In every dawn's uprising : that with this 
Mild, pitying image I may yet ignore 
The pathos of the westering of the sun 
Through thousand ages : that, by length at last 
Of years, I be still watching when the dawn 
Breaks of a new earth and returning day. 



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LOVE POEMS 



THE NILE 

** NOT with the tumult of a thousand tongues, 
** O Nile, but silently with serious pace 
** And sympathy a thousandfold for earth 
** And men and for the misery of things ! " — 
So pray'd L And old Nile unto my need 
Hath made response. A thousandfold his flow 
Enfolds me. In his broad beneficence 
Seem suffering and misery foregone. 

And thou, like Nile, not as I mourn'd thee late, 

Movest : a quickening and fecundity 

Unto my barren being. And in me 

The glad seed blossoms ; and the land is green. 



lo8 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



LUXOR 

I 

LOVE, for, if all 'soever of the world 

Must pass and yield place to the new that but 

By ruin of things old and in their fall 

Can build and flourish and be more than they 

(Making the dead best live, that only slept 

Till strength stirr'd o'er them) ; and these tottering 

halls 
Be now so tragic-splendid that the soul 
Seems smother'd by their very dust : how vast 
Must be the world built out of these, beyond 
Conception of endurance, place or mass, 
In time's unsculptured speech, those harmonies 
Which live by motion, yea, by perishing : 



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LOVE POEMS 



II 

And thus are everlasting ! If my love 

Seem'd of such beauty that the whole heart faints 

With memory of some entablature, 

Some architrave or column crumbling down 

Out of the reaches of an infinite air — 

And earth is desolation : shall not I 

Allow the working of my soul ; and build 

As none have built before, not out of stone 

But mutability, of birth-in-death 

Absolved and reconciled — the absolute Art ? — 

I know not. Only, now the breath comes blind 

With dust and tears. For still something would bide. 



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AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



THE TWO COLOSSI OF AMENOPHIS AT 

THEBES 

One had not sat and waited here so long 
Alone. But, thus companion'd, it might be. — 
When dusk had come and all the night was dark 
And dreadful in its hoar decay ; and stars 
Were dimly distant : then had one alone 
Been fearful ; and the morning had not found 
Him vast nor steadfast. But, with two to feel 
A sympathy through earth's long night of things, 
Dawn seem'd not doubtful. And when dawn at last 
And sunsurge smote, yet no expected tone 
Sonorous gave response : then had one brow 
Melted. But two have still survived the shame. 



Ill 



LOVE POEMS 



NIGHT ALONG THE RIVER 

Tall palms athwart the lifting moon their plumes 

Sweep as in pale procession ; and beyond 

Gleams silver-gray the desert whose grim hills 

Move ever stilly and with sheen of some 

Broidery to the hem of Egypt's robe. — 

A cere-cloth and a pitiable show 

Of grandeur as the ruin'd tinsel round 

Some stark sarcophagus ? Some corpse of love 

Trick'd out in ornament to wear thy name 

Yet crumble at the first lift of the lid 

And fall to powder at a finger's stroke ? 

Say, rather, fresh strength stirring : though one love. 



112 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



DAWN AT ASSOUAN 

FOR is not Egypt wakening anew 

Whilst none less Egypt ? If no longer dead 

And buried 'neath the ruins of her strength 

But builded o'er them otherwise than they, 

Yet none less Nile's own nation stretch 'd afield 

Green to the sun and flourishing as when 

'T was Pharaoh's granary ? — If recent hands 

Would alter and by altering revive 

The spent vitality, shall I then shrink 

From any least enlightening, for the fear 

Dawn were not thine : as day, night, both have been ? 

Life, if but life, were Egypt's : more than death. 



113 



LOVE POEMS 



PHIL^E 

AND here is something of magnificence 

Which hath been ; which shall never again be 

As it hath been ; and which our very zeal 

To foster and preserve hath made unworth 

Men's admiration. Liefer, let it lie 

Lovely beneath the fertilizing flood 

A sacrifice to new civilities ; 

Than worse than waste our labor, spoiling all 

The beauty as the tragic offering. 

The benefit and vicarage alike ! — 

Were yet yon temple even I myself, 
None other ; would I spurn thy fostering ? 



114 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



ABU SIMBEL 

I 

Out of the sullen stone thou carvedst me 

An heart, and madest it magnificent 

With sculptured imagery, that all my walls 

Had borne thy features. And beneath my roof 

Even in the midst of me the vault was held, 

Love, by thy form and person splendidly 

Hewn of my living substance. And my gates 

Were guardian'd round by thee, thee mountain-huge 

And heaven-like exalted, that the world 

Of mountain and of heaven's high vault might know 

Who builded him and who was this man's soul. — 

Yet came the sand and choked all utterly. 



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LOVE POEMS 



II 

And after may come searchers who have seen 
Some crown obtruding or a sacred brow 
Unburied by some chance swirl of the gale 
And rearing marvelous, inexplicable 
Out from the driven desertness and death 
To mock with wonder. And perchance their toil 
Shall find the splendor of thy person still, 
Though worn and shattered with the centuries, 
Sufficiently denoting what was once 
Of vast religion and eternal faith. 
And they shall see where the last line broke off. 
And share thy cenotaph with bats and owls. 



116 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



KHARTOUM 

Ay, love, for what avails sincerity 

If earth hath other truth none less sincere 

Which, overpowerful, must twist and thwart 

My singleness of purpose to some snarl 

Of falsity ? That here a noblest life 

Went down in darkness and distrust, but that, 

With peace at heart, he held perforce a sword ; 

With war in every purpose, yet pursued 

Conciliation : such must give us pause ! 

What were my love when met with truth none less 
Sincere of unlove, than a hate at heart ; 
As hate profess'd, other than love for thee ? 



117 



LOVE POEMS 



OMDURMAN 

Thus in these uttermost antipodes 

Hath throed and sprung through fiercest tragedy, 

Through writhings of the heart implacable, 

The new truth : how the final service God 

Hath ask'd, were just — death ; though the world deny 

And call religion madness. Should I hate 

Hard as I love thee, be not much amazed 

At the apostacy — *t were death to me ! 

Which thou, as now I understand thy will, 

Demandest : leaving me to lie and bleach 

Bone-white beneath the sun, scorch'd on this sand. 

So in my desertness I still live love. 



118 



AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 



THE DESCENT TO THE SEA 
So in my desertness I need thee still ! 

Though the white eastering waves shall pour and pour 

Over and past and on beneath, whilst soul 

And foresight, will and all intelligence 

Are firm to the one purpose to resume 

World's interrupted labor and defy 

Their ruin that is in me — all is thou. 

Thou, these gods' fall ; and thou, time's pulse and tread 

That plants its onward foot upon their neck 

League after league : and thou at last the goal 

Of desperate persistence godlessly. 

Egypt, mine Egypt, only hath been thou. 



119 



LOVE POEMS 



EXODUS 

** Therefore, not thou canst cure me of myself, 

** Egypt ! scarce thou ; nor yet thy swarth Soudan 

** Beyond thee fervid, tragic equally ! 

** Not hundred-hued sweet Thebes, with morning and 

** With evening in her temples and her fields, 

** Opal and emerald and gold, can free me. 

** And if not thou, great Egypt ! then what else 

** That earth hath of the living or the dead ?*' 

For I am not as I would other men 
May be : full meekly to revere (nor crave) 
Thy beauty and thy wonder and thy might. 
I leave thee as I came. For I am I. 



120 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 
I 

Because the vivid West with thy wan soul 
Is bound and burdened ; and the year of love 
Is past with that short season of thy faith ; 
And, though thou breath 'st, yet that thou livest not 
Save in an outward semblance : therefore toward 
An East long dead and moveless, breathless, lost 
Out of all motion of earth's outward year, 
I with my faith, my soul, at latency 
Yearn marvelously and mysterious-wise : 
Seeking some vital substance. Where the world 
Hath been but is not, haply there the soul 
Liveth ; and recompenseth living faith. 



I23 



LOVE POEMS 



II 



Were the hope wanton ? — I had thought to find, 
Here where thy masterful rich womanhood 
Dwelleth at compact with a world of power, 
The absolute completion. When my love 
And joy in thee made harmony of all ; 
And strength seem'd autovital : then thought I : 
Though earth might pass, fulfilling so earth's self 
By death, yet faith that had upbuilt the world 
Were everlasting : and our life therewith. — 
Now shall I deem the syllogism strain'd ; 
And love, as earth, fulfilling self by death ? 
Or might I hope my love, love not enow ? 



I24 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



III 

The worship had seem'd sacred utterly ; 

The faith, redemption ; and the sacrifice, 

Foreseen and almost as with fortitude 

Accepted, seal'd or so had seem'd to seal 

The consecration. And though earth were dead, 

Dream'd I, religion, heart's criterion 

Of life or death, were not a thing to die. — 

Now were criterion of life or death 

Itself death's subject ? Might oblivion 

Lay hold on that intelligence wherethrough ' 

Alone might any memory have end ? 

Or were religion not of me and thee ? 



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LOVE POEMS 



IV 

Our love had seem'd so much religion-like 
That when the first inevitable loss 
Of faith ensued upon the death of thine, 
Then I with incommended subtlety- 
Deduced full analogue with love's old tale 
Of One ; and of the endurance for awhile 
Of faith in Him ; but now even as His world 
Were dead in the East, so that the faith of Him 
Had likewise perished. Thus I bitterly 
Denied my better insight that had been ; 
And yielded to an imagery obtained 
Not of His message : but of earlier gods. 



126 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



For to a land of old fatuity ; 

Of half-forgotten fetters ; of strange faiths 

And mystic fantasies of monstrous forms 

Half worse-than-human ; and of wrecks of these 

I fled ; where every feature of the earth 

Might picture ruin as it was in me : 

So to escape thy world, thy mockery 

Of strength unquenchable. And there I found 

A faith gone-under and an ancient soul 

So dead 'twas marvel.it seem'd once alive. 

And so I sought to feel the death of faith 

An incident and instance of all things. 



I27 



LOVE POEMS 



VI 

Somewhat there was, I call'd in that dark hour 

The spirit still of thee, that would not die. 

Someway such antique land, though desert-dread 

And worthless of a resurrection, told 

Thy story over and over as I gazed. 

I call'd it lingering faith within my dream 

Of thee and came away with on my lips : 

** Egypt, mine Egypt, only hath been thou " — 

Blaspheming, as I know. Though thou wast dead 

In me, there rose even from those soulless stones 

A soul ; an insight of a valent faith 

That was in them : for all its falsity. 



128 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



VII 

A FAITH that so, despite its falsity 
Of hewn enormities, of life trod down 
To stifling in death's effort to endure 
Without end by material monument, 
Was infinite, forever working on 
Into the living faiths that since have been ; 
And ended not with crumbling of its tombs. 
A faith that therefore and therein alone 
Was somewhat still beyond my faith in thee 
And buoy'd me up and led me on to know 
There might be life without thee : not without 
Divinity. Thou, not my soul, wast dead. 



I29 



LOVE POEMS 



VIII 

And thus that thou in soul and all with thee 
Of thine onworking West are to my spirit 
Dead ; and there lie beyond the morning lands 
Of desolate stagnation : following on 
The hint old Pharaoh's stagnancy hath given 
I journey. And my journeying shall find 
An holy place in desolation, though 
Long desolate yet holy. And a faith 
I once deem'd dead with its own sacrifice 
Shall haply surge again. And in its life 
Shall faith in thee, religion-wise, renew 
The soul lost out of labor : and we live. — 



130 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



IX 

FOR nothing is there here that hath endured 

Of tomb nor monument ; nor sought to stay. 

If Egypt wastes her substance to endure 

And deems destruction and the desperate change 

A death, what hope were, in a world of change, 

That Egypt, save in some vague grief alone, 

Should be an influence to later years ? 

What hope were, mine Egyptian, that thy change 

Should seem in me less than an utter death 

By desperate destruction ; thou alive 

Save as renunciation ? — Someway here 

The sacrifice seems consonant with strength. 



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LOVE POEMS 



Here is no effort against onwardness, 

No hint of horror at self-sacrifice 

Even to obliteration. Here the past 

Lives by its willingness, its zest to move 

Outward and still beyond, absorbing all 

Of future wonder by desertion quite 

Of first scenes and the primal face of faith. 

Nay, hath the loss seem'd His but to those hearts 

Which will not waken to wax onward still, 

Which yearn at some stability untoward 

Of creed and custom in our fluxioning : 

Missing the self-stability of Him ? 



132 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XI 

FOR the world wakens in these latter days 

As it hath waken'd alway ; and it seems 

As though the wonder-workings of the age 

Were incompatible with what hath been : 

And Christ were grown archaic. And there bide 

Reactionaries who with coward cant 

Apologize for heaven and doubt the fact 

Of earth ; contending 'gainst the crude half-cult 

Of earth-for-earth-alone. But there are ways 

Beyond the ken of either disputant 

To reconcile antinomies : denying 

Nought save their need that truth be dual-whole. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XII 

Ay, we have fought, we even Christ's followers, 
Through darken'd ages of a dual truth : 
One law for earth that leaveth Christ behind 
And one for Christ His kingdom altering not 
Nor suffering adaptation. But we miss 
Still the true view by few if fit attained : 
How, by the absolute relinquishment 
Of every creed and tenet to receive 
Each fragment of the new- won basketful, 
Thereby and thus alone the scrap becomes 
Full feast and faith is science-justified. 
Here,* love, if love be, shall the faith be won. 



134 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XIII 

What merit in denying that we know 
For sake of somewhat which, as truths now prove, 
We know in error ? Why pretend our place 
Of Palestine were earthly Paradise, 
And Christ the God-on-earth seen yesterday ? 
Why pretend that my faith in thee now past 
Endureth ? — Yet there 's somewhat in the passing 
Of faith, of Christhood, of an holy place 
Which waxeth aye ! How were a present age 
Itself and present ; how were any truth 
Self-comparable with error : could the world 
** Be as though yesterday had never been ** ? 



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LOVE POEMS 



XIV 

Therefore assume through every change of truth 
The viewpoint, not of him that must deny, 
But of the faith for which denial stands. 
Therefore abjure not of a God-on-earth 
Nor holiness in mere geodesy. 
Till that for once we have assumed the place 
Of Christhood in ourselves ; and, being assured, 
Ay, of the fact that faith in Self hath been. 
Discern what 's presupposed unto all time — 
Now, as to past — by virtue of that Now 
Which is of all-time ; what *s supposed of truth 
Even by denial and by *' love pass*d-by ". 



136 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XV 

FOR we may err by too close subtlety 
Of literal analysis, may fmd 
I never loved : because the love I now 
Conceive, interpret and would seek expound 
Shows loftier with a novel synthesis. 
Yet were the virtue of the new conceit 
Mere affectation were it not attain 'd 
Through ** writhings of the spirit implacable ". 
Our science-world were wanton as the Greek 
Had we not come through ages iron-bound 
Of Schoolmen torturing to the last resort 
The logic antedating their own Christ. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XVI 

The logic therefore failing before Him. 
If by too wide reaction men have swerved 
On one hand to denying any rule 
Of reasoning and maintain in face of facts 
Empirical continuance of His word ; 
Or counterfalsely deem the lore of facts 
Sufficient to intelligence nor heed 
Warning of what a will accomplishes : 
Error and counter-error were not His. 
His was a feeling for the faith in facts, 
The fact of faith. — Shall a new logic-law 
Interpret what love spake in parable ? 



138 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XVII 

But someway we imagine still, with lore 

Of ancient Aristotle platonizing, 

How either were each item isolate 

And self atomic, else the actual flux 

From item unto item finds its stand 

In superimposed conservatism of type ; 

Self still atomic save as generalized 

And merged. We deem our Christ, our love, our faith 

Rather a passing point illuminate 

Somewise by some unaltering source of sight 

Nowise within us save as each were all : 

I, thou but by commingling in desire. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XVIII 

Now that communion is an unreal aim, 

Even as Christ a man who truly died ; 

And that there is no fact throughout all earth 

Indifferently another nor facts all 

By any subterfuge : hath love an end ? 

Hath Christ as Christ ceased to have been Himself ?■ 

Lurks there one truth in all our waste of facts 

Half -realized, it were : that the fact not-now, 

If utterly distinctively at end 

And nevermore to be confused with fact 

Of any present, thus imperishably 

Lives in the life its death serves to define. 



140 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XIX 

The world *s alive but with the paradox 

Of multiple identity conserved 

Even by the passing and the change from it. 

Self were not one ; nor any truth of fact 

Were estimable : save the world beyond 

By no confusion nor no merging with it, 

But by inexorable otherness 

Through every alteration, still defined 

The alterative entity as whole. 

Such for our insight of these latter days 

Half-utter'd, half-foreshadow'd. — Not some Love, 

But my lost love lives in denying it. 



141 



LOVE POEMS 



XX 

LOVE, mark the revolution. Science sneers : 

** The isolation is a given surd. 

** How, what the resolution, save by type, 

** We care not.'* And the churches stupidly 

Retort : ** Eternal verity is one. 

** We see not any seeming parodox 

** To solve.'* So each in some agnosticism 

Evades the opportunity. Christ said : 

** I, who am 1 and thus no other man, 

** Imply men all ; that they are whole by me.** 

But neither of our wisdoms speaks as His ; 

For both are scribes without authority. 



I42 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XXI 

Recorders both : that from fresh tablets-trove ; 
This, of old oracle ! — yea, neither dark 
Self-utterance attaining. And the screed, 
Their record of earth-nature as of God, 
Hath need of author. But one scribe hath faiPd 
To foist upon the earth an arbiter ; 
And one discredits thought's necessity : 
Mis-reasoning of a world which point by point 
Conceiveth of itself in every point 
Self- revelation. — Shall we but record. 
Copyists merely ; or, by utterance 
Original, reconcile self and world ? 



143 



LOVE POEMS 



XXII 

And note the blindness. As I pray'd and yearn'd : 

** Thou shall I be : and thou shalt be my peace ! '* — 

So scoff they both ; the church, the science each 

Predicting absolution : that, ** In God '* ; 

This, ** In the void of cosmic negligence *'. 

It matters little ; for the goal were nought, 

The satisfaction of amalgamance 

A self-destruction. He had better sight : 

** Because of this my separateness unique, 

** Define I all ; am therefore whole by them.'* — 

How have men shrunk from self-interpreting 

The utterance ! How, wanted to be One ! 



I44 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XXIIl 

This then is love : to stand beside the world 

A selfhood segregate ; and, thus because 

A thing unique, not substituting for 

Some joy or pain of any, therefore whole — 

Not part of any though defining each — 

A joy, a pain conclusive of theirs all ; 

A sacrifice beyond vicarious 

Atonement, self-creating a world lost 

To learn and thus to save it : in oneself 

To prove divinity to every time. 

And therefore were the cosmos or the God 

Vacant alike in their fatuity. 



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LOVE POEMS 



xxiy 

Such the first step, love, in reconstituting 
The vividness of Christ as of my love. 
To take upon me, as the sins of the world 
Even for redemption by acknowledgment, 
The virtue of the loss, the passing-by 
Of Christ's own story, of thy woman's faith 
(If faith) ; denying nowise of the world 
The absoluteness of the death of it, 
Nor value of death's subject. So I turn 
My soul to feel the vividness of His 
Long-past atonement ; fill my heart with it 
As not-mine : and redeem thereby my world. 



146 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XXV 

But solipsism none — declaring self 

Alive with love that hath no other-self ; 

No personal divinity without 

The worth of a world created and maintain'd 

In work ! And therefore with the hope to prove 

Thee vivid and the speech made half-divine 

As not since Egypt and a faith disrupt, 

I hitherward have turned ; avowing all 

The passing desolation ; yet in change. 

The desertness and insignificance 

Of this waste country, claiming for the Christ 

Fulfilment of a world-divinity. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXVI 

As Christ conceived it, palpably the faith 

Was parable, no clear-cut logic-term 

Defining beyond cavil ? Yet I think 

The phrase was for the world, as this for thee ; 

And fitted not too closely to a truth 

Of individual divinity 

The world had misinterpreted straightway ! 

Howbeit, such the truth I take of Him, 

And such the resolution : to obtain 

Ability to work in and for thee 

By virtue of the passing of my faith 

And passing of faith's longing to endure. 



148 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XXVIl 

No mergence, no community ; save as 

The love-totality of faith in self 

To reinterpret and to save a world 

Touches thee and is touchstone of thine own. 

No isolation as in latter days, 

More than the mergence of that past desire ; 

But definition of thy vivid soul 

Not dead, by reference through every act 

To thine activity. That so thy West 

Of onward-working proves compatible 

With life in the spirit : and the world is well. 

No Palestinian wanness : save renew'd. 



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LOVE POEMS 



XXVIII 

The world works on. MVe are not left behind 
Like Egypt, like the love of yesterday 
Nor that false phantom of the shallow creeds 
Who died ** but to endure **. For we endure 
Even by entering in and working through 
New tragedies, new desperateness day 
By day, with fresh assurance of a will 
To feel an universe and, feeling earth, 
Earn wholeness in the estimate unique 
Soul puts upon it as soul's act of faith. 
This be the meaning of mine estimate 
Created in me of an East now dead. 



• I50 



PALESTINE UNVISITED 



XXIX 

Did not I write, then when our faith was new 

And love was victory, and Christ did live, 

And life was as religion ; sang I not 

** Beloved, and Mary meets thee on the hills *' ? 

How otherwise the world ! And through what toils 

Of counter-dispensation are we come : 

In image of this tale and tragedy 

Of Christendom ! But now the phrase anew 

Hath meaning. Mary greets thee as her Son 

Not living, nay, nor dead ; but risen from 

The sepulchre of ages when the world 

Look'd to His second coming : unaware. 



151 



A MOURNING FOR DEATH 



A MOURNING FOR DEATH 
I 

I SANG ; when last the chill frost overlaid 
All passionate earth, and forest fastnesses 
Were steel-stiff, and the world's rigidity 
Wrought in me ; then I sang, as one o'erlaid 
With sepulchring white snow and stiffened as 
The forest-iron beyond sufferance : 
Awaiting then a springtime and a sun 
Which, surging, show'd my seeds a barrenness ; 
Proved death — the death of him adored as thou • 
For truth of earth's return to quickening. 
And thou wast so estranged I deem'd thee dead 
Though near me. • — Now these songs I send afar. 



i?? 



LOVE POEMS 



II 

BELOVED, I could not latterly abide 

Earth's two-fold tragedy. Bereavement seem*d 

Too utterly, intolerably the truth 

Of every feature of my soul and world ! 

Wherefore, since he was not attainable 

Who in default of any fathering God 

Had been eternal Father unto me, 

To thee I turn'd — pardon the hope forlorn ! — 

Who wert attainable : and found my dead 

In so far forth as thou wast of the dead 

Alive as formerly. And now I bear 

Only the death and suffering of him. 



156 



A MOURNING FOR DEATH 



III 

T WERE still a grief sufficient to a soul, 

Amply intolerable : as my breath 

Bore witness when it fail'd then at the first; 

But now relieved, enlightened by the life 

Thy soul's resuscitation showeth me. — 

I cannot pander to the creeds profess'd 

Of faith in future resurrection known 

For fact impossible. I cannot lie 

In face of truth and try pretend belief 

In any mere continuance of his spirit 

Now nor at any moment after death 

Hath been. But I may learn of life through thee. 



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LOVE POEMS 



IV 

FOR first let me accept the fact of death 

Such as it still most surely seems to be : 

That now he is not anywhere about, 

Dwelling nor being with me ; but that somewhat 

Which once was he though now is nowise of him 

Lies somewhere placed apart, haply lest we 

Might ever know and craze our hearts with it. 

*T were sweeter to consign unto the fire 

Of purification such sad carrion. 

But, as the fact is, this I know of death 

In plain recital. — I had thought of thee 

Not as the same : though parted as by death. 



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A MOURNING FOR DEATH 



And therein, by the seeming severance 

Unalterable and intolerable, 

Had lain the application unto thee 

Of death*s, which buried as the dead thy name. 

And now I learn the seeming severance 

Yet revocable ; and the parallel 

A falsifying of the fact of thee. 

And thou wilt be about, and share my store 

Of casual converse ; that we meet and part 

To meet again : so wholly unlike death. 

And only somewhat not felt of the dead 

Debars from fullest life, suggests death still. 



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LOVE POEMS 



VI 

That somewhat wanting to our fullest life 

I need not tell thee now nor make my prayer. 

I wait thee : as I could not wait the dead 

Who change not, wax not as thy soul shall grow. 

I pass the poor complaint and take of thee 

With infinite exaltation that thou givest — 

The opportunity to do thee praise 

In speech and upright living by thy grace 

Unto the end (may I not fall from thee !). 

The possibility to purge my soul 

Of its untoward rebellion, facing death 

And finding in it this, yet lack'd of thee. 



l6o 



A MOURNING FOR DEATH 



VII 

And finding, in bereavement which abides, 
Life's very fulness which thy life suggests 
As formerly, though even as latterly 
Denies as from some sepulchre. For, whilst 
By lovelessness in thee I held thee dead. 
How might my spirit in the fact of death 
Detect establishment of deathless love ? 
But, now thou art alive as formerly 
(No dream of death) , thus even thy lovelessness 
Relieves death of the burthen ; leaveth love 
Rejoicing in its dead as not in life : 
Raiseth the dead to life unendingly. 



161 



LOVE POEMS 



VIII 

FOR now I mind me of the facts of death 
With new interpretation : how these years 
Of dispossession and of desolateness 
Are not the years of him who Heth dead. 
Are not the hours of him ; who last did live 
With very love of me upon his lips ; 
For whom no aeons of a loneliness 
Weaken one worth of that companionship 
Which fiird and held — not (as 1 feel) his last, 
But — his eternally fulfilling days 
Of soulship and of worldhood. For the Now 
Of Self may cease not : though it be not now. 



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A MOURNING FOR DEATH 



IX 



Thus by the grace of thy resuscitance 
And by the gratitude I owe to thee 
Abides the presence and the life of him 
Even in the wisdom now at length vouchsafed. 
Him have I with me as 1 held him then 
Beyond the power of any death to take, 
His love and his death equally alive : 
A source of strength and insight as of joy 
Through all-time, solace of the lonely years. 
And when at last thy love affordeth me 
Fulness of life, shall any love be lost 
Because death also hath its victories ? 



163 



LOVE POEMS 



X 

Beloved, for the lovelessness of thee, 

Though teaching love's affinity to death, 

Involves no implication that our life 

Is life the more by seeming lack of love. 

Nay, rather, if thy least resuscitance 

Hath power to prove love deepliest for the truth 

Of that which otherwise were emptiness 

(Turning the void to some fulfilment still) 

How mightily by this am I confirm 'd 

In primal faith : how, bringing to thee all 

That life or death alike in me provide, 

I meet in thee the world that was my soul I 



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A MOURNING FOR DEATH 



XI 



Wherefore is no bereavement recently. 
Wherefore is every blustering of this bleak 
And savage season an assurance (through 
The opportunity to combat strength 
With strength, to enter in and be as one 
With these wild boreal tempests) an assurance 
Of reciprocity in strength with thee, 
Prophecy of thy soul's upsurging spring 
To reconcile and quicken when thou comest. 
Therefore I send unto thy living heart 
These seeds from out my love-fill' d sepulchre 
Not barren, nay, nor sleeping : only, dead. 



165 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



I 



Beneath these swales of white forgetfulness The Lofty 

Bad-Lands 

In blank monotony yet beautiful 
(Wherethrough my spirit passes that it sing) 
Lieth another beauty not of them 
Save in its breadth monotonous of harsh 
Insistent savagery. These wastes of schist 
Half-cover'd crystal clean must here and yon 
Still thrust to outcrop where the storm was wild 
That overlaid them, and the grief severe 
That tortured them to their rough imagery 
Of tragic waters in unceasing pain. 
These stones oppress me still for all their snow. 



169 



LOVE POEMS 



II 

The East in pQR J havc been a dweller by that sea 

Retrospect 

Whose wintry breath is as a flail of frost 

To beat upon the body and the soul 

Of him who breatheth it. And all its strength 

Is leaden, burdening the heart of him 

To desperation who doth strive thereby 

And take unto himself the shock and roar 

Which poureth from it. Such the Atlantic is 

And such am I, even as the spume-scour'd rock 

That shuddering seethes to sanded nothingness. — 

Thou being as ocean, I must put between 

A continent to dare behold the sea. 



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A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



III 

It were not I would wilfully neglect The journey's 

•^ ° Warrant 

Thee and thy truth's inexorability ; 

Nor wholly that thy truth imposed through mine 

Is tyranny beyond my power to bear. 

But empty art thou of the life my soul 

Must live if anywise be life to me : 

That with some pitiful pretence of life 

(Love's multitudinous delight in earth) 

Forbidden to my spirit must I my sight 

Delude and cheat with shows of passing things. 

The panorama of thine ocean spread 

Did lead me desertward but yesteryear. 



I7I 



LOVE POEMS 



IV 

The Undertaking ^j^d dcsertward maybe lead me once more 
These oceanic billowings of scene 
Even as formerly. And I yet sick 
Return to take my mockery of life 
Once again unto me : and be as now. 
But, though the worst be, no oblivion 
Can cure the sickness that the spirit knows. 
Therefore be unforgot beneath this shroud 
The desolation and the fruitlessness 
Which soul can garner but by soul alone 
In intimate possession : ah ! the death 
Forever in me though I live — as thou ! 



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A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



Ay, between thee and that far shore of strength "^^^ ^^^^^ '^^ 

Expectation 

Whereto my journey beareth stretch wide sands 

Unshrouded, naked of a covering scar 

Where loss and isolation alone bide 

Sublime by self-acknowledgment. And there 

Shall snow be seen a source of cosmic fact, 

An implication of the grief below ; 

No lethe, but sealing at worst earth's cirque. 

Rendering self-sufficient unto earth 

Each place of earth's purgation. In such art 

As nature makes of aimlessness beyond 

Self-imposed process shall the sight take truth. 



173 



LOVE POEMS 



VI 

TheContinen- ^nq by that truth scnsc soul's Hcw Wakening. 

tal Parting of ^^ 

the Ways Por cvcn HOW the rivers of the east 

No longer turn their slow streams unto thee. 
But here be torrents which in some serene 
Southwestward ocean after tortuous course 
Shall find completion and a quick rebirth. 
Though fires had barr'd them yet a mightiest gorge 
Is of their rupturing and their route their own. 
Like to those waters now released from thee, 
Descending from the hills I find outspread 
Still but an image of my nakedness. 
And lesser waters all are lost in it. 



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A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



VII 
Here is that vast plain wherearound my soul *^^® ^^^* s^* 

^ -^ Basin 

Rears passionately towering, shuddering from 

Its acrid desolation. Cities stand 

About the outskirts of its desertness 

Fair at my feet ; but all its pasturage 

Is penance and the heart of it is full 

Of sourest brine causing, not quenching, thirst. 

From every altitude that is my soul 

Ice as the sweat of my stark agony 

Sweeps down to mingle with that bitterness. 

That wide wan mockery my soul surrounds 

Wholly : no drop shall ever reach a sea. 



i75 



LOVE POEMS 



VIII 

Its Geologic Yet but that very bitterness of death. 

Destiny '' 

This dreg-remains of my dread sacrament, 
Is proof of intimate process where my soul 
Hath purge if drop by drop and sweat by sweat 
Of somewhat which must yet be purged of me. 
Haply in course of ages even my snow, 
=My crown of still attempting the great truth. 
Shall melt from my diminishment and then 
Only deintegration tell that once 
Was something that aspired : and I attain 
As by surcease of struggle ; liberate 
These waters as I wholly die with them. 



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A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



Though there be some who with a patient thrift And also its 

*^ Mystery 

(Those citizens whose labor looks so fair) 
Are husbandmen of these my frost-fed streams 
To turn into a garden each his place 
With daily watering : and thus my tears 
Are taught some present purpose. But at last 
Must the flow foul and dwindle and those few 
Who trust the hills about them be betrayed. — 
Still is there one who as mine head sinks low 
And lower saith : ** What fume the sun sucks up 
** Collected of thy chrism shall more and more 
** Pass o'er thee and its longing be appeased." 



177 



LOVE POEMS 



And Desire J DQUBT me not that when these hills were new 

They were as I, creatures who took their care 
Of this life-chance within them for some space 
To further, by experience of light 
And air, the natural increase of faith 
Under the sun. And as the heart within 
Their early-aging circumspect grew stale 
No adventitious outlet to their orb 
Relieved the self-suffusion. As my soul 
Became they this intensive tragedy 
Indifferent to earth's life beyond their death. 
But in this hope of death become they whole. 



I78 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



XI 

An hope of death here seemingly achieved 

By every sign of charnel-bleaching earth. 

A corpse below and in the sky above 

The piercing poison that put out its life 

By too much passion, not enough of peace. ( 

This then is peace, the hope and help held out 

Of modern insight, of all earth to-day 

As man would make it. — Is no earth of God 

Discoverable, shall no ocean be 

Salvation whence we come and whither go ? 

Behold a beauty to itself alone : 

*Twere somewhat. Is there anything beyond.? 



The American 
Desert 



179 



LOVE POEMS 



XI! 

Its Pact of Perchance where southward far that stream pursues 

Failure *^ 

Its wonderwork amid the insensate stones 

(That stream whereof the power is all its own 

And springeth from the source and is not fed 

By any other streams save streams as strong 

To sculpture out a world as is itself : 

Not by the world about it !), there perchance 

Were somewhat nobler, richer than the dream 

Of oceanic mingled mystery. — 

I wot not yet. The desert here doth cry 

For ocean and shall not be satisfied. 

Desiring bread hath earth brought forth a stone. 



l8o 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



XIII 



Assuredly not in a desert death ^nd Mystical 

Redemption 

Is read the lesson of the life of things. 

If seemingly a circuit closed and done 

Without resumption, yet suggestive still 

Of yearning toward an ocean but beyond. 

Arid if the destitution be aware 

By self-acknowledgment (as, save self-shamed, 

Were desertness a fair fertility) 

Must ocean be concluded of these stones 

In sensible presence ; and yon barriers 

That westward rear nigh insurmountable 

Inspire but soul's best effort to surpass. 



181 



LOVE POEMS 



XIV 

The Snowy LO ! for the conquest shall exhibit fields 

Range 

Of full fertility for patent fact ; 

The weathering of the cycle of the streams 

For absolution : if mysterious still 

By abnegation, yet by rich access 

Of multitudinous fecundity 

Thereby proved universal every stone ; 

And desertness no limitation but 

Some end and aim in virtue of itself. — 

Thus in the paths of earlier conquerors 

To force the achievement and be free at last 

Of the immediate system of the sea ! 



182 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



XV 

All earth would sing. — But there is much of blame J^^f.p^^}^^^ 

^ Californian 

To pardon in those earlier conquerors vaiieys 

Ere paradise be wholly here approved. 

Blood-stains of conquest, rage to rifle earth 

Of earth's worst bane or bounty, scoring all 

With plague-pits of past desertness anew. 

Nor hath men's exploitation of the fields 

Been pure of tyranny and toils of shame. 

The grief is here which ever bides with men 

Of concupiscence. May the unlusting hills 

Which hymn the high Pacific yet teach men's hearts 

The harvesting and garnering of soul. 



183 



LOVE POEMS 



XVI 
The Country BEHOLD, for there hath been a chronicle 

of the Spanish 

Fathers Of loftiest effort after singleness 

Of spirit to the benefit of men 
By stern self-abnegation. And the tale 
Soothes the vex'd soul in its contemplating. 
In that old history the earth and air, 
The hills and the quick streams do all conspire 
With ocean to the consecrating of 
The human purpose and are proof of it. 
The sense of desolation as of thee 
Is lifted from my spirit ; as thus I take 
Religion of the loss, learn'd of these hills. 



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A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



XVII 

Here was the spirit of the conquerors south coLt 

Not too much stain 'd with conquest. Here that rage 

To ransack earth seized not upon men's souls. 

Nor modernly hath stark oppression mark'd 

The working of new highways to the world : 

As where with wheat are flesh and blood thresh'd out 

To glut the seven-fold monster. But these vales 

Harbor their people ; with the sea before, 

The serious hills behind to be their hearth 

And heaven to roof them. While above their fields 

Stand towers, not towers of conquest, but the home^ 

Of harvesters and vineyarders of men. 



I85 



LOVE POEMS 



XVIII 

Its Missions FOR pious pricsts havc toil'd along this land 
With book and bell, with solemn forest-cross 
To yield salvation ; and have suffered some 
Their crowning martyrdom ; and some have passed 
Full of the ripe years laden low with souls. 
And there be those who still at cheerful tilth 
Bear the brown robe and greet their ground with 

prayer. 
A creed is in these mountains ; and along 
This shore lies wondering many a mystic isle 
Where fragments of the hills, having steppM down, 
Receive a baptism each of its own cloud 
Upgather'd and descending as a dove. 



186 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



XIX 

Day by day, love, along this sun-steep*d coast Mountaias 

As over every isle of omen'd blue 

Riseth the sea-wind softly and upon 

The flanks and features of these hills uncouth 

Maketh a cloud to crown and cover them. 

The brute-like breast, the gaunt, bough-bearing brow 

That unregenerate rear unashamed 

At heaven, lie hooded and their ridge engown'd. 

And o'er their limbs these peaks initiate 

Receive the oil and ichor coursing down 

In sacramental secrecy to brim 

The one wide holy basin bathing all. 



187 



LOVE POEMS 



XX 

The Mountains' J HAVE ascended as these rains descend 

Metaphor 

To feel the absolution : and have seen. — 

The flood beneath that by infiniteness 

Symbols the wholeness of the acknowledged soul ; 

Ocean beneath in far tranquillity. 

And neighboring the strand those emerald swales 

Which are the first and best of human works, 

Field-gardens in their young fecundity. 

And, round about me, strugglings as of some 

Effort to lift as earth shall lift no more. 

But over all, brooding and crowning near. 

That consolation cloud-born of the sea. 



188 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



XXI 

Thus, thus shall all earth's struggling then attain, And its inter- 

pretation 

By consecration to the accepted cup. 

Thus soul's deintegration (felt and fear'd 

In former song and by that earlier song 

As death accepted) were shown sacred yet. — 

The rains descend. I as those barren buttes 

Of yesterday am wash'd into the sand 

A desertness ; but as these hills to-day 

Should take some splendor by the tragic truth, 

Some sense of self- repletion. ** From the sea, 

** So back unto the sea " : were void ; save for 

Such storm-hewn steeps to shrink and suffer still. 



189 



1 



LOVE POEMS 



XXII 

Their Time of ^ SEASON cometh in each rounded year 

Emptiness 

When clouds are wanting and the relentless sky- 
Sucks up no moisture save from earth alone. 
The vineyards wither and the fields of tilth 
Are shriveird every one unto a scar 
To tell of passions, burnings that have been 
But are not in those days of afterdeath. 
Myself was but some scar of afterdeath. 
Some cicatrice where passion onetime was ; 
But as the reawakening of these hills 
To cloud-crown 'd tragedy I too shall grow 
Couraged to suffer comprehendingly. 



Igo 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



XXIII 

The barren spirit of the conquerors "^^^ ^^^^^ 

Perchance was in me — them whose only aim 

Was fierce possession. Surely was I one 

Who fain had ransack'd earth and heaven to know 

The treasure of thine heart nor leave it whole. 

Oppression was there, mine own bone and blood 

Forced to the wine-press to be worthier thee 

By unremittent labor. Even have I 

Fled from an ocean, from thine absoluteness 

To save a self. — But now these wrongs are past. 

I pray by the Pacific and serve his flood 

With offering of my song drawn of his streams. 



I9I 



LOVE POEMS 



XXIV 

The Same YEARS may retum when yet myself a flood, 

Fill'd with the strange swift strength of serving thee 
(Though nowise merged sea- wasted in thy soul), 
Shall hew awide, as almost erst, a course 
Through desertness indifferent : we being thus 
Creative-sculpturing as that rich stream 
South westward ly wreaking on self surprised 
Its powerful purpose to be perfect god. 
Time was when prospect of such power of heart 
Had seem'd a peace passing this present peace 
Vouchsafed less nobly. But herein I hymn 
Content this dream that passeth only death. 



I92 



A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 



XXV 

Never anew the fear, the dread fatigue i^P^^e^^ 

' ^ The Same 

Of meeting thee upon that marge of self 
Where land and life with agony have end. 
Never anew absorption 'neath thy deeps. 
But acclamation of the private loss 
(Thus absolute, conclusive of thy truth !) 
Unending in this difference of heart 
'Twixt earth and flood, my sufferance and thee. 
Thy surge descends, thy strong denial thrills 
The storm-wrought stone, the strain 'd experience 
That rears at outlook o'er thine infinite. 
I rise new-bathed, a continent, from thee. 



193 



SEP rs 1912 



